


It was bound to happen

by InsaneJul



Category: Baccano!
Genre: First Kiss, Kidnapping, Late Night Conversations, M/M, Newspapers, Sleep Deprivation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-22
Updated: 2017-01-22
Packaged: 2018-09-19 08:57:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9431669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsaneJul/pseuds/InsaneJul
Summary: Elean gets back to the office after the fateful night with Eve, meets up with Nicholas, and tells the story.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Like no one else saw this. I cannot believe I had to invent the tag for this ship. Bi!Nicholas all the way.

            Elean leaves Eve at her home, still coming down off the adrenaline high after being caught by the Runoratas. He’s still sore at Nicholas for telling them to kidnap her. Everyone looking for this boy Dallas had really gotten too tiresome for him. What was the big deal about a disgusting delinquent, anyway? It’s surprising enough that his _family_ is still looking for him, let alone half the crime families in the city, though it seems that they’re looking for him in order to put a beating on him. He doesn’t blame them.

            It was long past dark by the time he returned to the office, not to debrief but just to retrieve his sidearm, which he felt the absence of every moment of the last few hours. Reaching into his desk, he is surprised by a far-too-smooth-for-this-hour greeting. “Elean.”

            He snaps up, hand gripping the gun a little too tightly, to face his favorite coworker. “Nicholas.”

            “What are you doing coming in here this late at night?”

            “If you must know, I’m retrieving my weapon.” He waves the gun at Nicholas’s face. The other man isn’t even fazed.

            “You left it here?”

            “I didn’t think I’d need it.” Elean sighs. “Turns out I’m wrong more often than I like to think.”

            “Aren’t we all.”

            Elean was taken off guard by Nicholas’s self-deprecating statement rather than some kind of insult, which he thought he’d walked right into.

            “What are _you_ still doing here, anyway?”

            “Oh, don’t you know? I live here,” Nicholas winks at him, causing him to roll his eyes and shut the drawer, standing to fully face his coworker.

            “Seriously.”

            “I am being serious! Haven’t slept in my own bed in days. For something that hardly ever has a physical presence, information is a damn tiring job.”

            Elean can relate. “What’s happened to you?”

            “Aside from being threatened with death three times in the last week?” Nicholas rolled his eyes. “Just sleep deprivation.”

            “Eve was kidnapped, you know.”

            “I thought she might be.”

            “I still can’t believe—“

            “Look, you’ve all ripped into me enough, all right? I get it. It was wrong of me to put her in danger. I won’t do that again. I just thought it was the only way for anyone to learn _anything_ about the guy, at this point.”

            “Well.” Elean adjusts his glasses. “You weren’t wrong about that.”

            “What?” Nicholas looks suddenly excited. “Something happened?”

            “She escaped, obviously, and I picked her up. She requested I take her to the Gandors, who apparently knew something about her brother. I didn’t want to, but I’m so sick of this guy, you know? There was nothing special about Dallas.”

            “He was just a goddamn asshole,” Nicholas nods.

            “So I took her. And we found out what happened. The guy was apparently partially immortal, for reasons that were unclear, at least to me. He murdered the Gandor’s men, so they encased him in concrete and dropped him in the Hudson.”

            Nicholas drew in a breath. “Damn. That’s harsh.”

            “Wouldn’t apologize, either.”

            “Ha! Of course they wouldn’t.”

            “But at least they told her. And they agreed to let the Runoratas take him back out. Eve gets to see him, occasionally, I think. Don’t know what drove her to make a deal with the people who killed her father and other brother, but then I guess there’s a lot about this whole thing I don’t understand.”

            Elean paused, rubbing the back of his neck. “It’s a damn nasty business, all of it,” Nicholas says, and for the first time he almost sounds genuine.

            “Didn’t think any of this could get to you.”

            Nicholas just shrugged in response, leaning a little closer to Elean. “As long as our part in this is done, I can finally get some sleep.”

            The other man smiled at his coworker, for the first time in a while. “Amen to that.”

            As he turns to leave, Nicholas grabs his arm. He tugs himself free, not intending to even face him again. His feelings concerning Nicholas were…complicated at best. Anything even resembling an amicable encounter was strange and out of place. “Hey. No one’s around. Your dignity is still intact.”

            Elean rolls his eyes and turns back around. “What is it that you want, Nicholas?”

            “I just…it’s been a while since you smiled at me. Felt weird.”

            “I’ll make a point of avoiding it in the future,” Elean took a step backward but Nicholas filled the gap immediately.

            “It’s…nice.”

            Neither of them were really expecting to kiss, not right there in the hall, and neither of them know who started it (though, after, Elean will blame Nicholas fully). It just sort of happened, and then it kept happening, until Elean was digging his nails into the hair at the back of Nicholas’s neck, angry attraction keeping them stuck there together.

            “Is this…” Elean is panting a little when he pulls back, “What you did…with Rachel?”

            “Don’t you act like that is close to this,” Nicholas snaps, and leans back in.

            “You don’t treat us any different.”

            “What do you want to hear me say? That I’m an asshole? I treat everybody like that. And what happened between me and Rachel was a while ago. Can you just—I just want to—“

            Nothing more was said for a long time.

            “I was originally intending to go home.”

            “Yeah, I was too.”

            They separated, and Elean watched Nicholas straighten his shirt and vest.

            “I’ll, uh…I’ll see you tomorrow.”

            “Sure.”

            “Get some sleep, all right? I think you’re a little delirious.”

            “If I’m delirious, then you are too.”

            “Whatever. Goodnight, Nicholas.”

            “’Night, Elean.”


End file.
